Empire Strikes Back: Why Black TV Is Beating the Box Office

Last week, the director Lee Daniels watched on with the rest of us as Selma received an Academy Award nomination for best picture but saw its director Ava DuVernay and lead actor David Oyelowo snubbed in their respective categories.

“It was bittersweet and difficult hearing that Selma didn’t get nominations for Ava and David,’’ said Daniels, who was at one point slated to direct the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic. “Nominated for best movie but the director and the actor aren’t a part of that? I’m confused.”

Confused, perhaps, but not shocked, thanks to his own snub for the buzzed about, but ultimately ignored-by-the-Academy, The Butler in 2012.

“That was an eye opener for me,” said Daniels, who received a best director Oscar nomination for his film Precious, which was also a best-picture nominee. “I drank the Kool-Aid but I got a wake-up call real quick. Think about it, who gets to decide who is the best anyway? Just do the work and hope someone appreciates it. That’s all you can do.’’

For Daniels, and an increasing percentage of black Hollywood as of late, that appreciation has come from TV viewers. The massive success of Daniels’s new Fox television show Empire is testament. Daniels stepped away from his self-described day job as a filmmaker last year to try his hand at television, a medium where, given Shonda Rhimes’s primetime domination and the multi-ethnic casts of hits like The Walking Dead and Orange Is the New Black, diversity seems to be less of an issue. It may prove to be his most genius move yet.

Empire, which Daniels calls his “black Dynasty” for its soap-opera vibe and cast, debuted as the highest rated television show Fox has aired in three years. The hip-hop–driven drama’s premiere counted nearly 10 million viewers, and, even more impressively, managed to gain nearly a million viewers more in its second week. That sort of week-to-week growth is virtually unheard of for a new show. The show saw [another audience gain] (http://insidetv.ew.com/2015/01/22/empire-ratings-up/) for its third episode, which aired Wednesday night.

“No one could have told me that a television show airing one night could reach more people than all my movies combined,’’ said Daniels. “I had no idea because, to be honest, I’ve always been that ‘film guy’ who looked down on television. Not anymore. I also never thought I’d see the day when black people would be all over the television. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’’

Still, the big numbers on the small screen haven’t quite translated to theaters and films featuring minorities on a much larger screen. While 2014 saw a slew of notable black films released to positive or even excellent reviews, box-office numbers for the likes of Selma, Beyond the Lights, and Dear White People failed to live up to early promise of box office gold. The Equalizer, an action film starring Denzel Washington, was the only well-reviewed film with a black lead to become a bona-fide hit in 2014.

As noted, Selma was nominated for best picture, and has received an abundance of positive reviews (as well as criticism from a vocal minority of historical absolutists). Yet it has only made $29 million at the box office thus far, including $11.5 million over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day long-weekend holiday; compare that to American Sniper, the Bradley Cooper-starring Chris Kyle biopic which topped $90 million dollars over the same holiday period.

Television, however, tells quite a different story. According to a 2013 Nielsen report, African Americans watch 37 percent more television than any other demographic, and finally major networks have responded to that reality. Thanks in part to Rhimes’s three-show block on ABC’s Thursday night schedule, fondly called “Shondaland,” television shows featuring African-Americans, particularly women, as main characters are no longer an exception in primetime television.

Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal creator Rhimes’ extended her golden touch on ABC this past season with the runaway hit How to Get Away with Murder, starring Oscar nominee Viola Davis. The network also added the comedy Blackish to their fall roster, starring Oscar nominee Laurence Fishburne. Both shows received warm reviews, and, perhaps more importantly, have both been renewed for a second season. And beyond the networks, Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black has earned star Uzo Aduba an Emmy, star Laverne Cox the cover of Time magazine, and brought a national spotlight to one of the most diverse casts anywhere, television or film.

“There’s no denying that television across the board is where the focus and excitement is right now for any artist,’’ said Reggie Hudlin, a producer of Django Unchained who has also directed episodes of Modern Family and The Office. “And that’s been extremely lucrative for minorities, particularly for women of color. The major reason is they get to portray multi-layered characters with compelling storylines.’’

By contrast, women of color are often absent from big screen feature films and when they do appear, it isn’t often in a dominant role. Chris Rock, whose film Top Five earned his co-star Rosario Dawson some of the best reviews of her career, recently gave a scathing review of the film industry’s casting habits to the The Hollywood Reporter: “They will throw a black man a bone, ok here’s a black guy. But is there a single black woman in Interstellar? Or Gone Girl, or Birdman? I’m not sure they are. I don’t remember them.”

Hudlin agrees with Rock’s harsh assessment of the industry, but feels there are several other factors at play. “Hollywood is all about big franchise films these days, like The Hunger Games, and Marvel comic book characters,” said Hudlin. “Those kind of films may have a role for a black man but not black women.”

Of course there have been a few black-centric films to find box-office success over the last two years. Ride Along and Think Like a Man Too had big box-office numbers but it can be argued that Think Like a Man Too already had a huge following as a result the best-selling book and that both films featured well-known stars such as Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, and Gabrielle Union.

So what does a black film really need to succeed to match television’s stronghold on diversity? Big names? Better quality and compelling story lines or possibly bigger budgets to make better films? Or perhaps it takes all of the above.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood has pondered the same questions for years and for good reason. She spent four years writing her critically acclaimed love story Beyond the Lights, released by Relativity Media late last year. The emotional tale of a popular music star and her true love earned reviews so flattering it seemed destined to be an at-least moderate hit.

It wasn’t.

The film debuted in November with ticket sales of just $717,000 in limited release. In its official opening weekend, it took in $6.2 million. By late January, after two months in theaters, it had earned $14.6 million. Prince-Bythewood, who also directed the cult classic Love and Basketball, seemed devastated. Two weeks after the film’s debut she penned an impassioned letter to fans that was posted on numerous blogs. She asked audiences of all colors to support her film about a story rarely seen, a love story between two people of color.

“’I’m not sure I have one reason for what happened to my film. One thing is I’m not sure audiences really understood what the film was about from the marketing,” Prince-Bythewood told VF Hollywood. “The black community is not monolithic so we can enjoy all types of stories on the big or small screen if all the pieces are there,’’ she added. “But we’re also in this space where if there isn’t some type of ‘heightened reality’ put into the story’s equation, it may not work.’’

Prince-Bythewood explains her definition of “heightened reality” as storylines that involve overly exaggerated personalities, implausible storylines featuring frequent murders, elicit romances and endless mayhem. That definition describes most of the top television shows featuring black characters on the air right now.

“The truth is we’ve nurtured a generation that expects to see big action in every frame to feel entertained,” said Stephanie Allain Bray, producer of the films Hustle and Flow, Beyond The Lights, and Dear White People. “But that can’t stop us from making the kind of films we love and that say something. Whether television or film, we just have to continue to make quality projects so that our varied stories are told.”

UPDATE (February, 3 2015): Since first publishing this story, we've added more up-to-date box office sales figures for Beyond The Lights, clarified that the film's initial release was limited, and added revenues for its official opening weekend.